ous faces! He well knew all the types from the disdainful
woman of fashion, the crafty daughter of sin, the vacuous country
visitor, down to the argus-eyed mere de famille, sternly resolute
in her set purpose of making three dollars take the place of five,
by some heaven-sent bargain.

Countless times he had threaded this restless multitude, with an
alert devotion to the interests of the Western Trading Company. He
was, to the ordinary lounger, but the type of the average well-groomed
New York business man.

And yet, his watchful eyes swept keenly to right and left, as he
breasted the singularly inharmonious waves of the weaker sex.

His left hand firmly gripped a Russian leather portmanteau of
substantial construction, while his right lay loosely in the pocket
of his modish spring overcoat.

To one having the gift of Asmodeus, that well-gloved right hand
would have been revealed as resting upon the handle of a heavy
revolver, and the contents of the tourist-looking portmanteau been
known as some thirty-eight thousand dollars in well-thumbed currency
and greasy checks of polyglot signatures.

It was the "short day" of the week's business, and the usual route
for making his bank deposit lay before him. Down University Place
to Eighth Street he was bent, thus avoiding the Broadway crush,
and over to the shaded counting rooms of the Astor Place Bank.

Clayton's mind was concentrated, as usual, upon his important
business. Few of the neighbors in the great office building knew of
the vast interests represented by the modest sign "Western Trading
Company."

Certain gray-bearded bookkeepers, a couple of brisk correspondents,
a stony-faced woman stenographer, with a couple of ferret-eyed
office boys were the office force, besides the travelling manager
and Mr. Randall Clayton, the cashier and personal representative of
the absent "head," who rarely left his Detroit home to interfere
with the well-oiled movements of the "New York end."

But daily, rain or shine, Mr. Randall Clayton himself took his
way to the bank to deposit the funds to meet their never-ceasing
outflow of Western exchange. There was an air of grave prosperity
in the sober offices of the great cattle company which impressed
even the casual wanderer.

Silence and decorum marked all the transactions of the weekly
messengers, paying in the heavy accounts of the hundreds of New York
butchers who drew their daily supplies from these great occidental